The Norwegian Nobel Institute has awarded Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado the Nobel Peace Prize "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."

"I have no words. Thank you so much, but I hope you understand this is a movement. This is an achievement of a whole society. I am just one person," Machado told Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, during the call announcing her win on Friday.

For the past 14 months, Machado has been living in hiding, likely somewhere in Venezuela, after leading the pro-democracy movement that became the driving force behind the country's 2024 presidential election. Her retreat into hiding reflects the regime's intensifying crackdown on dissent, which has left more than 800 opposition activists imprisoned, including several of her closest collaborators.

Among Venezuelan opposition leaders, Machado stands out for her belief in classical liberalism and free market capitalism. Her platform calls for the privatization of the country's state-owned oil industry, arguing that Venezuela can once again become a capitalist success story if the government radically reduces its role in managing the economy. She is also one of the few prominent figures to openly embrace socially liberal causes, such as same-sex marriage and the use of medical marijuana. The Maduro regime has characterized her movement as "anarcho-capitalist."

Although opposition to Venezuela's authoritarian regime spans the political spectrum—from the Venezuelan Communist Party to Machado's own Vente Venezuela, a liberal party—her determination and leadership have made her the central figure in the country's pro-democracy movement, earning her the nickname "the Iron Lady." Machado has long criticized the regime not only for its lack of democracy but also for its attacks on individual liberty.

Machado became a sensation on the streets of Venezuela as she campaigned ahead of the 2024 presidential election, traveling across the country and drawing thousands of supporters wherever she went. Standing on makeshift stages with modest sound systems, she focused her message on dismantling the myths of the socialist revolution. When she declared, "Being rich is good," the crowd erupted in applause.

The line was a direct rebuttal to former President Hugo Chávez, who once said in a televised speech that "being rich is bad, it's inhuman." Chávez assumed power in 1999, founding the socialist movement that dominates Venezuela to this day. That ideology has fueled the country's political repression and economic collapse, driving an exodus of more than 8 million people—the largest refugee crisis in modern times not caused by war.

Machado's political career began in 2002, when she cofounded Súmate, a civil organization advocating for electoral transparency amid Chávez's efforts to consolidate control over the voting system. In 2010, she was elected to the National Assembly, winning more votes than any other candidate in Venezuela's legislative history. In one of her most famous moments, Machado confronted Chávez on the Assembly floor, telling him that by expropriating private property, his government was engaging in theft.

In 2014, after she spoke at a meeting of the Organization of American States, the Venezuelan regime stripped her of her parliamentary seat in an attempt to silence her. But Machado continued organizing opposition forces and laying the groundwork for a democratic transition.

Her most significant breakthrough came in 2023, when she mobilized Venezuelans to participate in opposition primaries organized entirely by civil society, without state resources. Despite being officially disqualified from holding office, she won 92 percent of the vote, becoming the opposition's presidential candidate. When the regime barred her from registering, she named Corina Yoris Villasana, a university professor with no prior political experience, as her substitute. When the regime blocked Yoris as well, Machado's coalition turned to Edmundo González Urrutia, a little-known former diplomat.

The regime appeared to believe that running an obscure figure would weaken Machado's movement. Instead, the strategy backfired. On July 28, 2024, Venezuelans turned out en masse to vote for González, who won 67 percent of the vote, defeating Nicolás Maduro, who received about 30 percent.

Maduro, who took power after Chávez's death in 2013, faces charges of narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and corruption. He is a fugitive wanted by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. Department of Justice and Department of State have jointly offered a $50 million reward for information leading to his capture—the largest bounty in U.S. history, doubling the one once offered for Osama bin Laden. Maduro is also under investigation by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.

Official election results released by Venezuela's electoral authority, however, diverged sharply from independent tallies. To substantiate their claims of victory, opposition activists published 85 percent of the vote tallies from polling stations online, making them publicly accessible. Maduro has produced no evidence that he won.

Machado's Nobel Prize marks a rare international acknowledgment of classical liberalism in a region long dominated by populism and state control. Her victory highlights the persistence of an idea once thought extinguished in Venezuela: that freedom and individual rights can outlast even the most entrenched regimes.

On Sunday, a man with over 200 homemade explosive devices was arrested outside the D.C. church where Supreme Court justices were slated to attend a service marking the start of their term. With him was a manifesto condemning Catholics, Jews, Supreme Court justices, and ICE.

"D.C. police first approached [Louis] Geri inside a green tent posted on the top of the stairs leading to St. Matthew's Cathedral as they cleared the block for Red Mass—an annual religious service marking the start of a new Supreme Court term and honoring the judiciary," reports The Washington Post. "You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives," Geri told the cops. "Do you want me to throw one out, I'll test one out on the streets? I have a hundred-plus of them," he added, according to court records. "If you just step back, I'll take out that tree. No one will get hurt, there will just be a hole where that tree used to be."

"Several of your people are gonna die from one of these," he told the cops, as he was being apprehended. Devices appeared "fully functional" after being inspected by specialists, per court records, and Geri—who is being held without bond—faces eight charges.

Many people were shocked to see the identitarian left erupting in ghoulish celebration when news broke that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated. Students who despised Kirk’s political views were seen , “We got Charlie in the neck.”... British sociologist Frank Furedi argues that these students are not confined to a radical unhinged fringe, nor do they merely represent “the acts of a few morons” as many people suppose.

Rather, the celebrations reflect a broader “fetish of savagery” on the left, driven by academic theories that treat violence as “an act of self-care” for members of venerated identity groups. Furedi warns that, “reactions such as these are not merely the actions of a few infantile or radicalised individuals, it is baked into the modern Leftist world-view.” The left has become so preoccupied with its own sense of moral fervor that today “leftism – especially in its identitarian, post-colonial form – is an explicitly violent ideology.” It regards violence as a “cleansing force” that will help it to purge the wrongs of colonialism, capitalism, and all forms of historical injustice against which modern academics rail. Furedi explains:



As the ideological standard bearers of the left descend into openly endorsing the death of their opponents and the destruction of what they see as an oppressive civilization, it becomes increasingly difficult for libertarians to defend the doctrine of individual liberty without being cast into the same ideological camp as the identitarians. The individualism of the “me, me, me” left has helped to drive the poisonous identitarian philosophy in which “misgendering is violence,” “racism is violence,” and “silence is violence.”

The term “individualism” has in any case always been viewed with wariness by conservatives, due to its overtones implying selfishness and hubris, and its seeming disregard for social norms and traditional values, and this only gets worse when the self-obsessed left endorse violence against anyone they perceive as conservative. In this context, defending individual liberty seems to many conservative observers to be nothing short of suicidal, as it seems to require them to “tolerate” the values and lifestyles of the communists whose goal is to destroy Western civilization. Some conservatives are already expressing doubts as to the value of protecting free speech when it extends to the free speech of the ghouls rejoicing in Kirk’s assassination.

The fact that the notion of individualism is now tarnished by its associations with selfish and violent identitarian groups therefore poses a challenge for modern libertarianism, especially since individual liberty with its doctrines of free speech and freedom from state control lie at the heart of the libertarian creed. In his 1971 New York Times op-ed “The New Libertarian Creed,” Murray Rothbard characterized libertarianism as “the tradition that once established America as the proud beacon-light of freedom, the tradition of Jefferson, Paine, Jackson and Garrison.” The byline read, “A renewed faith in the individual is the basis of the new doctrine.”

He depicted this focus on individual liberty as “a burgeoning split in the right wing” as neo-conservatives grew increasingly preoccupied with “militarism and empire.” Today, the split in the right wing is growing even deeper, as nationalist conservatives launch a campaign to impose “consequences” on their ghoulish opponents by getting them fired from their jobs. In this context they have little patience for the doctrines of individual liberty.

Rothbard concluded his “New Libertarian Creed” with an important point which may help to explain why the notion of individual liberty has gone so disastrously astray—he explained that the goal of libertarianism was “raising the standards of freedom and reason on which this country was founded.” His emphasis on the individual’s right to self-ownership was explicitly linked to these foundational standards. When individual liberty departs from reason it becomes grotesque, a sinister parody of itself, and fuels the deadly notion that violence is justified if anyone feels his individuality is being “disrespected” by his ideological opponents. This is now the hallmark of the identitarian left—that failing to respect their stated pronouns, or failing to respect their legacies of oppression and pay them their “reparations,” amounts to “erasing” them and thereby justifies them in being violent.

History reveals this problem to have deep roots. William Lloyd Garrison—who was admired by Rothbard for his commitment to abolitionism—was also violently attacked by mobs who were outraged by his declaration that the Constitution was “the most bloody and heaven-daring arrangement ever made by men for the continuance and protection of a system of the most atrocious villainy ever exhibited on earth,” namely, slavery. Garrison’s denunciation of the constitution was deemed to be outrageous as it challenged the belief that America is a nation founded on the ideal of liberty. Hence, the abolitionists were often subjected to violent attacks. But many abolitionists, for their part, also embraced aggressive violence as a justified means of advancing their cause. John Brown—who committed cold blooded murder in the cause of abolitionism—was funded by New England liberal intellectuals, one of whom was a friend of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. They believed violence against the Southern states was necessary to promote the cause of justice.

Even the pacifist libertarian Lysander Spooner, in his 1858 pamphlet, “A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery, and To the Non-Slaveholders of the South,” defended the right of slaves to seize the property of their masters “by stratagem or force.” Today’s social justice warriors—schooled in critical race theories which treat “slavery” as synonymous with “racism”—believe that the violence of the abolitionist cause applies with equal justification to the enforcement of their own anti-racist ideals.

It is clear from these historical examples that violence permeating the cause of liberty is nothing new. But, as Rothbard explains in the Ethics of Liberty, violence is only justified in self-defense. Confusion has arisen because the boundary between aggression and defense has become blurred by convoluted identitarian theories in which violent mobs all believe themselves to be fighting “defense” against aggressors. As they see it, if violence is only justified in self-defense, that is their cue to don the mantle of social justice warriors fighting defense against tyranny, ignoring the fact that they are the ones committing aggressive acts against others. This problem of violence applies to all identity groups who believe they are fighting for the right to “live as who they are” and the right to bring “their real self” wherever they go. They want to be seen, heard, affirmed, celebrated, and even worshipped by everyone who has the misfortune to cross their path—or else.

Libertarians would agree that each person has a right to self-ownership, to live his life as he wishes without interference from the government or anyone else. As Rothbard put it, “Every individual as an independent acting entity possesses the absolute right of ‘self-ownership’; that is, to own his or her person without molestation by others.”

But problems begin when identitarians, many of whom identify as liberals or left-libertarians and claim to uphold individual liberty, forget that the right not to be molested by others also entails the duty not to molest others. They aggressively demand to have their individuality “respected” and issue edicts and ultimatums as to what they require from others as a mark of respect, on pain of violent consequences for non-compliance. It is difficult to think of a more perverse departure from “the standards of freedom and reason on which this country was founded” than a culture of individualism rooted in violence against one’s ideological opponents.

Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.

This morning, during routine patrolling in Broadview, in the same area of Chicago that law enforcement were assaulted yesterday, our brave law enforcement officers were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.

Agents were unable to move their vehicles and exited the car. One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fire defensive shots at an armed US citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.

The armed woman was named in a @CBP intelligence bulletin last week for doxing agents and posting online ‘Hey to all my gang let’s fuck those mother fuckers up, don’t let them take anyone.’

Thankfully, no law enforcement officers were seriously injured in this attack.

Pritzker’s Chicago Police Department is leaving the shooting scene and refuses to assist us in securing the area. There is a growing crowd and we are deploying special operations to control the scene.

This is an evolving situation and we will give more information as soon as it becomes available.